The City of Greensboro website lists a meeting of the Greensboro City Council Monday, Sept. 19 at 1 p.m.

According to the agenda posted on the website under “Upcoming Meetings,” the “Special Meeting” will be held the Public Safety Training Facility at 1514 N. Church St.

The agenda has four items:

  1. Call to Order
  2. Ceremonial and/or Presentations
  3. Matters to be discussed

C.1 City Council Emergency Management Training

  1. Adjournment

Only one of those four items is actually planned to take place and that is the City Council Emergency Management Training.

When the majority of the City Council may attend an event that is not purely social in nature, the city is required to send out a notice that a majority of the City Council may be in attendance and that constitutes a meeting.

Usually the city simply sends out the required notice that a majority of the City Council may attend an event to comply with the public notice requirement in the North Carolina Open Meetings Law.

In this case on Sept. 1 the notice was sent stating, “IT IS ANTICIPATED THAT FIVE OR MORE MEMBERS OF THE GREENSBORO CITY COUNCIL MAY ATTEND THE PUBLIC SAFETY TRAINING FACILITY ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2022 AT 1:00PM AT 1514 NORTH CHURCH STREET, GREENSBORO FOR AN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT TRAINING SESSION.”

What makes this unusual is that the city has also posted an agenda on the website, as if the City Council were actually going to hold a meeting, have presentations and discussions and presumably take votes.

Councilmembers, however, say that they have not been informed of any meeting.  All the councilmembers contacted know about is the emergency management training session and they had not been told that this is an actual meeting where ceremonial presentations and discussions will take place.

However, since a majority of the City Council may attend the training, the training session is open to the public.  So anyone who is interested in emergency management training is welcome to attend.

And then it is also possible that a majority of the City Council will not attend the training session.

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